How Often Do You Inspect Your Rented Out Property?

If you rent out a property to one or more tenants you will no doubt wish to make periodic inspections of the property to make sure that it is being well-maintained and that the tenant(s) are not breaking any of the tenancy conditions. For instance, if you do not allow pets in the property, you may wish to make sure that there aren’t any.

How would you feel if your rental property was maintained like this?

As the landlord, you do have the right to gain reasonable access to the property to inspect it. In order to do so you should always ask the tenant’s permission having given a minimum of 24 hours notice.

It may be that if you use the services of a letting agent that he or she carries out periodic inspections on your behalf but there is nothing to stop you doing so yourself as well. If you do not use a letting agent then you should consider carrying out inspections every so often. How frequently is up to you.

If you have a long-standing tenant who has been in the property for years you may choose to visit the property very infrequently. However, just because someone has been paying the rent for years does not mean to say that they have not allowed the property to get into a terrible state. Therefore you should make periodic visits, perhaps at least on an annual basis.

If you have a new tenant, you may wish to visit the rental property a week or two after they have moved in and then leave it a month before visiting again and then carry out another inspection three months after that. Thereafter, you may decide to visit every six months and in due course extending that to an annual visit.

You have probably invested a substantial sum of money in buying, renovating and fitting out the investment property. Therefore, your tenant should not raise any objections to you wishing to make such inspections.

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